


and all the other times

by dirtybinary



Category: The Magpie Ballads - Vale Aida
Genre: Casual Murder, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-War, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21966397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/pseuds/dirtybinary
Summary: In Astorre, in his patrol's barracks, Savonn is hiding someone.
Relationships: Savonn Andalle/Dervain Teraille
Comments: 10
Kudos: 12





	and all the other times

**Author's Note:**

> the magpie ballads? never heard of them.

Following a busy night of all the usual happy drama, Savonn retired to the patrol’s shared house in Astorre at half-past three. He did not expect his door to click open as soon as he got into bed (he had most certainly locked it) or a man in servant’s clothing (who was most certainly not a servant) to step in.

He did not expect the blanched pallour of the familiar face when it turned towards him, or the sizeable bloodstain on the roughspun workshirt.

He did not, at all, expect Red to whisper, “I hate to make a habit of this,” as he folded himself against Savonn in a controlled collapse, lips still upturned in a wry smile.

* * *

The first time—

The first time was not like this.

The first time, Savonn Silvertongue walked into the noonlit townhouse he shared with his patrol leader and ten men, and found the Saraian consul asleep in his bed. It was a matter of some alarm, and—given recent adventures—a cause for delight.

Red came awake at once. He did not stir so much as stiffen: one marked the tightening of the shoulders, the shift of the muscles in his arms. He lay on his front, like a cat, with only one hand in view. The other was tucked beneath the pillow in a way that, to Savonn’s practiced eye, left no doubt it was gripping a knife.

“How unexpected,” said Savonn. “How pleasant.”

He spoke in Saraian. One would be alarmed, waking to the language of one’s enemies, even if one had fraternised with said enemy on the most intimate terms. Red moved just enough so that his eyes and mouth came into view beneath the fall of bright hair. “How embarrassing,” he said. “Would you believe me if I told you this was the product of convenience?”

Savonn considered this. The bedroom door had been shut and barred; so was the front entrance. Red must have come through the window. The room was on the third floor, a daunting if not impossible climb. There was still the matter of getting past the house’s other occupants. Harin and Poldam were having an argument just two rooms away, and on the ground floor, someone tinkled on a spinet. It was a miracle Rendell was out.

“You define convenience very figuratively,” said Savonn. “Philosophically, even.”

Red laughed. He rolled over on his side, hair rustling across the pillow like a whisper of silk. It was like watching a flower turning, petals unfurled, to embrace the sun. “I’m not being chased.”

“No?”

“There was a crowd. Obnoxious. Your house was nearest.”

Red was a riddle. He was the secretive occupant of the grand manor that belonged to the Saraian embassy, the voice of Marguerit, the hand that passed the covert treaties about guns and gunpowder between Celisse and the Queen. He was, also, the soft-spoken lutenist who got migraines in noisy rooms; who held tight to Savonn’s hand when they passed through the market square together.

Savonn perched on the edge of the bed. “Is it better for you here?”

“Yes,” said Red. He stretched into a puddle of golden daylight, his arm flung out as if in invitation. The blankets were warm, and in what appeared to be a joyous accident, there was now just enough space for Savonn to join him in their cocoon. “Philosophy pays off, my dear. Every time.”

* * *

Red outweighed Savonn—not by much, but it felt like plenty when one party was delirious and bleeding out. Savonn manoeuvred him onto the bed with hands that could be gentle when he put his mind to it, knocking over an ewer and jostling the bookshelf. He grabbed the first almost-clean cloth that presented itself: his own shirt, just discarded. Red groaned and muttered something, the only word of which Savonn caught was, “—Inconvenient.”

“Getting stabbed usually is.”

The knife was lodged not far above the left hipbone. By the looks of the wound, it had been there for some time—hours—while Red fought, or rode, or spied, or acted, or whatever he did when he was being Savonn’s enemy. Once it was pulled out, the wound would start to bleed.

Savonn got up, making a list of the supplies he would need. Red made a noise of protest that sounded like, “Stay.”

His arm stretched across the bed in mute supplication. They had laid out for themselves no contingencies, made no provisions for what was to be done in situations like these. In coming here Red had folded up the chessboard between them and knocked all the pieces askew. Savonn touched the back of his hand; the smooth skin was hot with fever. “I won’t be long.”

It was a good thing Rendell and the others were used to strange noises emanating from Savonn’s room in the night. Among more mundane pursuits, there had been an explosion or two, an attempt to distill absinthe, a failed demon-summoning. Those still awake in the kitchen stared at him as he boiled water and fetched needle, thread and bandages, waiting to be waved off with his usual offhand quips. There would be questions to answer later. No matter. He was good at those.

He was not good at tenderness. He was not good at fear. He was not good at death.

But Red was breathing when he went back upstairs: tired, ragged breaths that rattled like loose stones in the closed room. Savonn found the packet of powdered opiates he kept in one of his ubiquitous pouches, shook out just enough to dissolve in a small glass of water, and propped Red’s head on his arm so he could drink. Red murmured something, and tried to swat the glass away.

“You’re safe here,” said Savonn.

If they had cast each other as enemies, he had broken character. For now, it was easier to make believe that Red was too far gone to parse semantics; that it was only the lulling prosody of Savonn’s voice that made him relax and drink. Thereafter there was no space for thought, only close, gritty work: the careful slide of the knife through stubborn flesh, hot water on hot skin, small white stitches like a toddler’s wavering steps to close the wound. Red muttered intermittently, but made no move to hinder him. His muscles had gone loose.

Close to dawn, Rendell rapped on the door. One could always tell it was Rendell by the firm sprightliness of the knock. Savonn lowered his voice by an octave to swear in Pierosi, raised it to a high-pitched giggle, and then in his normal voice added, laughing, “You can join us, there’s still room.”

Footsteps receded. No further knock came. Poor Rendell, always putting up with minor humiliations he did not deserve.

By the time Red woke, Savonn had come up with a litany of plans and counter-plans for every possible development. Rendell yelling at him to hurry and get dressed, because they had work to do. Rendell breaking down the door with a crowbar. A mob of Saraians besieging the house, because the Cassarans had abducted their consul. Kedris himself, walking through the door—

Red said, “How long?”

The sun was high. “Six and a half hours,” said Savonn.

Red made an ineffectual attempt to sit up. Savonn stopped him with a touch on the shoulder, and fetched him more water to drink. After a few laboured swallows, Red said, “Has anyone seen?”

“No,” said Savonn. “My patrol leader thinks there is an orgy in progress.”

The reward was worth the hours of tremulous waiting. Red smiled the smile Savonn had never yet seen him bestow on anyone else—the bright, marvelling look that said, _Only you._ His hand, now cool, closed around Savonn’s own. “I’m not being chased.”

“You never are.”

“I don’t come here,” said Red softly, husbanding his breath, “if someone's following me."

Savonn pretended not to understand. "Why not?"

"It wouldn't be fair to you."

Red tried to sit up again, and this time managed to slide himself several inches up the pillow. “This wound. It was—”

“Don’t tell me,” said Savonn. “Not if it was one of my side.”

Red let a moment slip by in silence. Their game had morphed into something lawless and unpredictable, something far wilder than chess. Savonn knew it, and saw the knowledge reflected back in every line of the body before him. “It wasn’t,” said Red. “Just a Bayarric banker with a bad temper. I would have seen it coming, but I was setting his guards on fire.”

He wrinkled his nose, as if his sandal-strap had come loose in the street, or his horse thrown a shoe. “I see,” said Savonn. “I suppose the banker met a similar end?”

“He got away.” Red’s brow creased into furrows of disgust. “Now I shall have to hunt him down all over again.”

“Where did he live?”

This time the pause was not intentional. Red looked down at his hands, folded on the cream counterpane. “I won’t ask for help.”

“Don’t ask, then.”

The hazel eyes rose to meet his, and dipped again. No need to argue: Red understood the logic of their predicament as well as Savonn did. He had come here because he could always fall asleep in Savonn’s blankets when the world grew loud. Because, if their places were switched, Red too would have given him a bed and a roof and stitches for his wounds. With him, speech was merely a hindrance, when one could convey the world with a wordless bar of spinet-notes.

“Until yesterday he lived in the House of Cherries, beside the mulberry field,” said Red presently. “It should be a pile of ashes by now. He will have fled.”

“Bankers can’t vanish if they’re to remain bankers,” said Savonn. “How much time do you have?”

“Till tomorrow.”

Savonn considered his contacts. Poldam’s latest girl was daughter to a wealthy broker, who would doubtless know things like these. And Gelmir could always be counted on for anything fun and life-threatening. “Rendell goes out at noon. I can disperse the others, find a wagon to take you to the consulate. You’ll be safe there?”

Red nodded. Above his clear eyes his brow was still creased.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Savonn. “Should be fun.”

The banker was no one. It could all wait till later, when everyone had left the house, and there was no longer a warm body with whom to share breakfast and his bedspread. Red said, “You have no plan.”

“I don’t need one,” said Savonn.

This was small business, all of it—lovers’ games, though they were not, of course, in love. He pressed his lips to the vein at Red’s temple, to see his lips lift in a slight flutter of a smile. Nothing serious, like the knife wound. Nothing fatal.

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> I found this missing scene in my livejournal archive dated 2015.7.19, so I polished it up and posted it. Because why not.
> 
> [enemyofrome on tumblr](http://enemyofrome.tumblr.com) \- come say hi!


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